“Shopping is our hunting and gathering,” says Sharon Zukin, a professor of sociology at Brooklyn College who specializes in consumer culture and suggests that the dollar-store experience is a mere updating of our evolutionary instincts. “This bare-bones aesthetic puts across the idea that there is nothing between you the consumer and the goods that you desire. You are a bargain hunter… You have bagged the deer: you have your carton of 36 rolls of toilet paper.”